


Playing Doctor

by gallifreyburning



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-18
Updated: 2013-05-18
Packaged: 2017-12-12 04:30:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/807248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallifreyburning/pseuds/gallifreyburning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My headcanon about the first time Ten and Rose ever kissed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Playing Doctor

They’ve just finished with the street party in Muswell Hill, Rose has hugged Rita and Tommy Connolly goodbye, and she’s practically skipping back to the TARDIS beside him, all wide smiles and apple cheeks. 

The Doctor’s been smiling quite a bit, too — the day ended well, even if it started poorly. Not that the word  _poorly_  begins to describe the way the Doctor felt, seeing Rose with her face stolen, seeing her screaming his name from inside the telly at Magpie’s. There are a few words in Gallifreyan for those emotions — words that resonate on multiple levels, indicating a complex blend of fury, outrage, terror and determination, but certainly none in any language from Earth. ( _Welll, there’s one German word, but it isn’t quite the same._ )

The minute Rose walks into the TARDIS, the spring in her step deflates a little. Her shoulders slump and her sigh is audible, even from where the Doctor stands at the bottom of the ramp. He bounds up to stand beside her at the console, bumps the side of her hip with his own, and begins pushing buttons and flipping levers. “I know just the place, a bit of relaxation, green sand and an orange sun, palm trees that walk straight into the ocean and swim with the fish. They’ve got a kind of dessert at this resort there, it’s sort of like grape-orange” – he twiddles his fingers in the air, as though he’s trying to catch something – “well, when I say grape-orange, I mean grapefruit-banana, but it’s brilliant, you’ll –”

“Wake me up when we get there, yeah?” she says, patting him on the arm and forcing a smile. She walks out of the console room, not moving particularly fast. 

The coordinates are already set, the TARDIS already on the move, and the Doctor flips a single lever. The ship hums, comes to a stop, idling in the middle of the time vortex.

Hands stuffed in his pockets, he wanders down the corridor after Rose. 

This isn’t new, him joining her in bed. It started after their visit to New Earth, when Cassandra had taken her body, violated her mind. He’d been jittery, after they got back to the TARDIS, he’d tried tinkering in his workroom and started and stopped a dozen different movies, he’d organized his transdimensional sock drawer (big as an airplane hangar, that particular sock drawer) and rewired a few things in the kitchen that didn’t need rewiring, and none of it helped distract him from the fact that he was so incredibly distracted. [Plagued by lingering fury and worry and everything else he’d felt, when Cassandra had used Rose like a marionette doll.](http://gallifreyburning.tumblr.com/post/16024359917/in-this-new-incarnation-the-phrase-im-sorry)

So on that particular day, the Doctor had gone to Rose’s room. Not because he was invading her privacy, no, no nothing of the sort, just because he wanted to make sure she was all right. And he found she  _wasn’t._ Still sleepless, hours after they’d gotten home, she leapt out of bed and threw her arms around him, holding him tighter than usual. So he sat on her bed and she sat beside him, resting her head on his shoulder, and he held her hand and talked about interstellar dust and the formation of nebulae, until the softest of snores reached his ears and he realized Rose was finally asleep. 

It’s become a routine, a small line in the sand they’ve crossed together, him shucking his pinstriped jacket and sitting on the edge of her ensuite bathtub while she brushes her teeth. And then she takes his hand and leads him to her to bed, even though he doesn’t often sleep ( _superior Time Lord physiology_ ) — lying down and holding her in his arms until her breath evens out, until that small snore reassures him she’s resting. Then he wanders off into the TARDIS to keep himself busy until she wakes up.

But if sometimes he stays for a while after Rose is asleep, noticing how soft her skin is and how she smells like strawberry shampoo and several not-unappealing human pheromones, that’s neither here nor there.

So today, when he steps into the bedroom behind her and reaches out to slide the blue jacket from her shoulders, putting it alongside his own brown pinstripes on the chair in the corner, she doesn’t look at him twice. He waits on the bed, arranging the duvet just like she likes it, while she brushes her teeth and changes into jimjams. The minute she collapses next to him, he gathers her into his arms and settles her against his chest. 

Normally after a harrowing day like the one they’ve had, the Doctor would babble until Rose falls asleep, distracting her – distracting them  _both_  – until their nerves are settled. Today, he can’t think of a single thing to say. He’s waiting, waiting for the sound of her snore, although this is one of those times he won’t leave even after she’s asleep.

He wants to see her face –  _needs_  to see it – because every time he blinks the memory is there behind his eyelids, the sight of her faceless head, the horrifying realization that she’d been lobotomized by the Wire.

The Doctor shifts around a bit, scoots down on the mattress so his arms stay around her waist and shoulder, but her face is in front of his own. She sighs and settles back down with him, her eyes still closed, her skin pink from being scrubbed clean of makeup, her lips swollen because she spent the evening at the street party nervously chewing them.

He takes his time surveying the slopes and angles of her face, cataloguing every detail of its architecture, every freckle and eyelash.

He’s on freckle one hundred thirty-six when she says, “I can still taste it. Like metal, or ozone, or something, in the back of my throat. I thought the orange soda would make it go away, or brushing my teeth might help, but I can still taste it.” She opens her eyes, her pupils huge in the dim light. “Do you suppose some of it’s still … inside me? Could it do that?”

It’s faint, the scent of cortisol drifting off of her, but it’s unmistakable. He doesn’t need the chemical confirmation, because the look in her eyes is enough; she’s still afraid.

He’s always wondered how humans cope, with unruly endocrine systems that have a mind of their own, releasing hormones willy-nilly and at the most inopportune times. As a Time Lord, he can suppress bothersome chemical reactions inside his body when he’s inclined, keep certain bodily reactions under control. One of the few things the Doctor rarely bothers to regulate is his noradrenaline (or the Time Lord equivalent; the chemicals are a bit different, but serve similar functions), because he rather enjoys the way it feels, coursing through his veins and making his hearts pound.

Right now, with Rose Tyler’s body stretched out against his, her curves pressing into him in exactly the right places; with the tip of her nose a few inches from his own, her gaze so focused and her breath warm and minty, the Doctor feels the Time Lord equivalent of oxytocin and testosterone building up for release. Normally this would be the moment he tamps it down, suppresses it so his head doesn’t get too muddled.

Normally.

Today has already been  _anything_  except normal.

There are few times when the Doctor’s brain switches off. Regenerative coma, sure. Rare moments when he’s completely unconscious. But even when he’s sleeping, he can feel timelines – possible realities, futures and pasts and the way they weave together, fixed points in time and the pull of the vortex – he feels it all the time, a portion of his enormous Time Lord consciousness always aware.

In this moment, in Rose Tyler’s bed, the Doctor loses awareness. The ticking of the universe stops; time is irrelevant.

“It’s gone. The Wire is gone, and you’re safe,” he whispers, bringing up a hand to her face. He traces the curve of her cheek with his thumb, shifts his head forward to touch the tip of her nose with his own. “I’ve got you.”

As his hand slides around the back of her neck, stroking through her hair, her breath hitches and she closes her eyes. “How come I can still taste it, then? How can you be sure?”

Well, truth be told, the Doctor  _isn’t_ completely sure. He tasted the Wire in Magpie’s shop, remembers its flavor, and as he takes a deep breath he can’t find a hint of it drifting off of Rose. Of course, scent isn’t as precise as taste.

His eyes are open wide, fixed on her lips – pink and parted just enough so he can see a hint of her tongue behind them.

“Do you want me to make sure? I could do that. If you want.” His voice sounds squeaky in his own ears.

Time Lord endorphins and testosterone are trickling through his body and he should try to wrestle them under control, to clear his head so he can get an accurate reading, but the minute Rose whispers “Yes,” the trickle turns into a flood, and any thought of containing it is gone.

“Okay,” he manages not to stutter as he uses his hand on the back of her neck to tip her head up just a little. He leans in, hearts pounding erratically, and his lips touch hers.

It’s the first time they’ve kissed – truly, _properly_  kissed – just the two of them, with nothing and no one else involved. Because extracting the time vortex from her on Satellite Five and being snogged by Cassandra in Rose’s body didn’t quite count.

Her mouth moves against his and she makes a small noise of surprise, a breathy sound in the back of her throat.  _A good sound_ , the Doctor decides,  _not anything to worry about._ Not if her fingernails curling into his waist and her hips rolling an inch closer to his are anything to go by.

His mouth moves, too – sampling her top lip first, pressing against her bottom lip after, testing each more than once because a proper scientific examination isn’t valid otherwise. Cataloguing scent and flavor and completely forgetting to regulate _anything_  in his own body at this point, not with her chest heaving erratically as she sucks in small breaths through her nose. When the Doctor opens his mouth to swipe his tongue across her bottom lip ( _for a more accurate sample, naturally_ ), she makes that same breathy noise again, her fingers balling into a fist as she holds his shirt so it comes untucked on one side.

His toes curling against the mattress, the Doctor pulls away and opens his eyes. She does the same, blinking slowly, pupils so enormous they almost swallow her irises. His voice is hoarse: “Nothing there. Not a hint of the Wire left.”

“But it …” Rose pauses, seems to gather her concentration, and her gaze sharpens as she stares at his face, fixates on his mouth. “I didn’t taste it there, on my lips.”

“Where is it, then?” he asks, and they both know what’s happening, what’s going to happen, and her fingertips have found a patch of bare skin above the waistband of his trousers, her hand so human and hot.

“Can I show you?”

“Probably be best if you did,” he replies, trying for nonchalance and utterly failing. Because he’s the opposite of nonchalant right now, he’s exceedingly chalant, and his big Time Lord brain has forgotten if that’s even a word in English but it doesn’t matter because he didn’t say it out loud, did he? No, he’s fairly certain he didn’t, he hopes he didn’t, even though chalant  _is_ a word in Homoxian that refers to a specialized branch of anthropology on the Homoxian homeworld, which would certainly  _not_ be applicable in this particular situation. If he’d said it aloud.

Rose closes her eyes again, kisses him again, and the second her tongue touches his mouth, right where his lips are parted, he forgets to breathe and his respiratory bypass kicks in. She opens her lips the same time his tongue slips forward to meet hers and she’s not just warm, she’s  _scalding,_ it’s slick and hot and minty-fluoride and _Rose._

The nerve endings in this particular body are incredibly sensitive – he doesn’t remember this from before, every single one is incandescent, it’s as though she’s a power source and she’s lit him up from his scalp to his toes.

The Doctor pushes forward, tongue dancing across her teeth and sliding down the length of her tongue. She doesn’t hesitate, reciprocates the exploration, sucks his bottom lip into her mouth. When her teeth squeeze the sensitive flesh he makes a noise – a grunt or a groan or something more feral, he can only hear the thundering sound of his hearts in his ears – and he rolls her onto her back, rising up over her.

He deepens the kiss, and that’s what finally brings back his presence of mind – the taste of ozone beneath her tongue, faint under the jumble of everything else, but unmistakable. It’s the taste of the Wire.

In that instant his head clears and he tamps down on every single hormone in his body, forces his blood to move faster and siphons them all away. At the same time, he finds the spot again with the tip of his tongue, tastes it carefully, analyzing and studying. It’s nothing threatening, he realizes; a nonsentient remnant, something that will be gone in a matter of hours.

When he breaks away from her with a gasp, she stares up at him like she’s lost in a fog, hooded eyes and moist lips. She reaches for his face, says in a breathy whisper, “Doctor?”

He catches her hand and pulls it to his chest as he moves off of her, pulls her into his arms again just like they were before all of this scientific testing started.

“Clean bill of health for you, Rose Tyler – not a trace of anything alien in there, nothing to be found, and I’d say that was as thorough an examination as you could ask for, really.” He clears his throat, licks his lips, because he can still taste her there. “Did you know that on Qwelt Prime the doctors do examinations with their feet? They only have one toe, and each toe has ten eyeballs, and each eyeball sees a different kind of light. A bit like a built-in x-ray machine, actually, quite handy for someone in the medical profession.”

She’s still breathing fast, her head resting against his chest, and he doesn’t let himself look at her face again. Instead he strokes her hair and keeps talking until she finally interrupts: “You just kissed me.”

The words pouring out of him stop. He examines her statement, considers deflections and denials and it-didn’t-mean-anythings. “Yeah. I did.”

“Hmm.” She’s moving her index finger on his chest, absently rubbing circles, and he’s almost too tired to try to control his endocrine system anymore. “Are you going to do it again?”

He puts one hand behind his head and stares at the coral struts in the ceiling of her room. Wrinkling his nose and sniffing, he says, “Yeah. I think I will.”

It shouldn’t be possible for a smile to be audible – it’s not like she giggles or anything, and he can’t see her face, but he  _knows_ she’s beaming. “Good. I’m going to sleep now, though. So maybe later?”

Her hair is soft and smooth as it slips between his fingers. “Later sounds nice.”

With a small, happy hum, she burrows into his side. “Good night, Doctor.”

He leans his cheek against the crown of her head. “Good night, Rose.”


End file.
